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Dr. Google, please report to Google Health, stat!

Google prepares to launch a new brand, Google Health. Doctors cringe and …

One of the first things most people do when they receive a medical diagnosis is go online and perform a search to find out more about their malady, even if it often frustrates their physicians. Given that Google is by far the most popular search engine, a good number of people likely begin their searches there. That may be why Google has been quietly testing a new Google Health service.

Reports are that Google plans to announce the new service at some point next week, possibly at the annual Google Press Day on Wednesday.

Occasionally available at http://64.233.167.99, (I had good results with this query) Google Health appears to operate along the lines of Google Music. So when you do a search for a topic like "anxiety," you get the ever-present sponsored links, a list of web sites related to the condition, and some "refine results" links such as "treatment," "research papers," "From medical establishment," "symptoms," "news," and "alternative medicine."

Google Health in action

Each of those "refine results" links takes you to a more focused list of links. For instance, clicking on the medical establishment link for anxiety attacks returns a list of links from government web sites like the NIH, the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, and the Panic Anxiety Disorder Association. Similarly, clicking on treatment brings up links to information on the treatment of anxiety disorders. It's helpful, but nothing that users wouldn't be able to find with a vanilla Google search

Like many of Google's other services, it's nothing groundbreaking. It's not a portal in the sense that Yahoo's new technology site is. With health information, there is already well-entrenched competition from sites like Web MD and Dr. Koop, which means that slapping a Google logo on a page of health-related links isn't automatically going to make it a destination.

What it does is make searching for health-related information a bit easier. If it seemed a bit less like another Google search page and offered more data like Google Maps and Google Finance, I would find it more compelling. With Google Health in a pre-beta state, the interface could change to something akin to a health portal, making it more of a "destination" site instead of a jumping off point.

Eric Bangeman
Eric has been using personal computers since 1980 and writing about them at Ars Technica since 2003, where he currently serves as Managing Editor. Twitter@ericbangeman